I literally have no idea what races I should use in my fantasy

>>49792940
All of them.

>>49792940
What sort of setting is it?

Decide on a dominant species
In our world humans are dominant because they're smart
There could be several dominant species, but one is clearly the best

Decide on sub species and their intelligence
If a sub species is more intelligent than the dominant species, you've got them in the wrong spots

>>49792960

High fantasy. I already have a bunch of non-playable races figured out, but I have a harder time thinking of the playable ones.

So far my ideas are just Lizard people, hobgoblins, and some other animal person like fox people or big titty cow people, but I'm really not sure.

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>>49793080
Try lanternfolk.

Humans/Oni/Tengu

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What would be some interesting traits for an outsider race based on Deva/Asura? The idea isn't to exactly copy wholesale or make them celestial like Aasimar or Tiefling but to make a race of four armed Abberrant PC race.

>>49793105
I like this.

>>49793239
Asura stats from a Pathfinder game I ran.
• Ability Score Racial Traits: Asuras are domineering and driven. They gain +2 Strength and +2 Charisma.
• Type: Asuras are outsiders with the native subtype.
• Size: Asuras are Medium creatures and thus have no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
• Base Speed: Asuras have a base speed of 30 feet.
• Languages: Asuras begin play speaking Common and Celestial. Asuras with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following languages: Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, Kenku, Halfling, and Sylvan. See the Linguistics skill page for more information about these languages.
• Exalted Resistance: An Asura with this racial trait gains spell resistance (SR) equal to 5 + her level against spells and spell-like abilities with the evil descriptor, as well as any spells and spell-like abilities cast by outsiders.
• Halo: Some Asuras possess the ability to manifest halos. An Asura with this racial trait can create light centered on her head at will as a spell-like ability. When using her halo, she gains a +2 circumstance bonus on Intimidate checks and on saving throws against becoming blinded or dazzled.
• Spell-Like Ability (Sp): Asuras can use Rage once per day as a spell-like ability (caster level equal to the Asura's class level).
• Skilled: Asura have a +2 racial bonus on Intimidate and Perception checks.

>>49792940
>Using anything but humans.
Lame.

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>>49793279

Awesome. Quick synapsis of what I was going for. Basically a D&D setting that is Destiny with Hindu influences. The Asura the humans killed in a cataclysm that caused two planes of existence to crash together exposing it to the far realm.

>>49792940
as >>49792977 said, decide on a dominant species. But even before that, decide how much contact each race has had with other races. In ours, the elves are dominant due to their sheer lifespan (which also gives inventors enough time to really refine their methods despite the conservatism inherent to a long-lived race) and renaissance technology. Not that it matters, because none of the player races have discovered each other (the elves know of at least goblins, who used to be a slave race).
At least it lets us get more interesting than 25 human kingdoms and 1 kingdom for each other race.

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>>49793105

I'd totally do it if there were more pics of them. I thought about it but with my limited imagination they all just look like variations on that guy when they could look totally varied and weird

>>49793355
Sounds like fun. I used that Asura statblock for a Not!Rokugan Pathfinder game. Went pretty well. Had an Asura Maneuver Master pick a fistfight with a Hill Giant. Suplexed him through a wall. Good times.

>>49793105

I also kinda like lantern folk but the problem is, at least when I play/DM tabletop games, I don't want the player characters to lack any of the 'human weaknesses'. Like I don't want people immune to a certain element, or that don't need to eat or breath, or who would be (realistically) extremely difficult to damage unlike humans (like golems, warforged, etc). And even being immune to darkness or dark places would be something that would fuck up the game balance too much, which would be what lantern folk are.

>>49792940
I came here to say Kobolds.

So..kobolds.

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How about thri-kreens?

Everyone loves a nice thri-kreen.

>>49793940
Hot

>>49792940
Batfolk. They don't get enough (Read, near-any) representation.

Bearfolk.

Merfolk? Maybe the mysterious race known as Canadians?

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>>49793984
Beorn's, or pic related?

>>49793972
Remember the batfolk threads? Those were awesome.

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>>49793924

Easily solved with "Lanternfolk aren't a PC class"

You wouldn't allow a player to be a full-on Dragon in most games. Just nix the choice, ezpz

>>49792947
/thread

>>49792940
No tails/muzzles. Wings only if it's otherwise humanoid. Anything else is magical realm.

>>49792940
HOOMANZ HOOMANZ HUMANS ONLY WHAT ARE YOU FURRY SNOWFLAKE-MONGLER HUMANS HUMANS FOR THE EMPEROR OF MANKIND NO NONHUMANS ALLOWED EVEN AS NPCS

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>>49795123

I appreciate your post, thank you.

>>49792940

Tiny gnomes that live in mushroom houses and wear floppy hats.

They're deceptively strong for being only four inches tall (on par with a housecat or small dog) and can be aggressively belligerent when provoked.

>>49792940
Duck people.

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>>49795357
Hope we understood each other.

Do you have any folklore from where you are to pull from? Maryland here has a common story of goat people, so I made a race of bipedal goats with four digit hands (fuzzy face complete with long faces and weird eyes, unlike satyr, etc.) that traveled from the gods planet on earthy mote-ships. Pretty good at navigating mountain terrain, but they reproduce slow as shit so they tend to be familial clans that just exist near the settlements of other races.

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>>49793080

Maybe something like this?

Kendar
Drow
Dorfs.

Play all Dorf party. Race war now.

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How about deep ones?

>>49792940
What kind of story do you want to tell?

>>49792940
Elves, Dwarves, Fairies, Humans, and Mutants.

>>49797058
My next campaign begins with the PCs as part of a mercenary group, contracted by an empire, out of the frontier. They're assigned to a fortress on a big lake where they're assisting a settlement of lake mer-people with trade and such along the major streams and rivers that lead into imperial land. Gonna be fun.

>>49796190
>Duck people

Durulz, and Glorantha for that matter, do not get much representation in /tg/

>Having to have "races" in fantasy
If you can't make an interesting fantasy setting with just humans you have failed as a DM, a creative person, and fuck as a human cause you clearly haven't experienced the world. You're asking for a band-aid for your broad lack of anything resembling experience or critical thought cause going "ooh he has long ears, purple hair, and good night vision" and going through a half hour of explaining that and then dropping an anemic fantasy race civilization that's just a pale reflection of some amalgamation of real world civilization stereotypes around them is even less lazy than a wizard did it. You're even fully showing you're fucking having decision paralysis cause you're not sure what's actually cool enough to put in your game like some new fucking painter who doesn't know what color of blue to use for the sky like they haven't seen the real thing before while being unable to fucking test out the colors for themselves and make their own decision from that.

>>49797222
>>>/trash/

>>49792940
Tengu
Small sized frog people
Medium sized toad people
Hobgoblins
Rat people
Kobolds
Also humans elves dwarves etc.

>>49797238
>This character is interesting cause he has long elf ears!
>This character is interesting cause he's black ork and has red eyes!
>This character is interesting cause they're half demon!
The best these characters could have as interesting is bring themes of bigotry and others into the game if you're not just giving super powers because of shallow traits. In which case it's just the super powers that are interesting, and generally super powers paradoxical only interesting in what they can't do.

Or to make it more fun because I've seen this legitimately pitched and never followed up in any meaningful way.
>This character is inserting cause they're gay!

>>49797304
You don't seem very creative. Typical that guy mentality.

>>49797222
>having to have "magic" in fantasy
>having to have "monsters" in fantasy
>having to have "adventurers" in fantasy

Clearly, if you need anything fantastic in your fantasy setting you've failed as a GM, amirite?

>>49793080
>big tittied cow people.
Anon, we need to talk.

>>49797476
I'm pretty sure magic-less fantasy exists. It's not a popular sub-genre, but it is a thing.

>>49792940
I'm not saying I want to have sex with that deathclaw.
But I'm not saying I wouldn't have sex with that deathclaw.

Got your players already? Have them roll up their characters now so you can shape the game around their choices. The races they choose are the ones you want to spend extra time developing the cities and culture of. Notable enemies/allies can be used for other prominent races.

For example, if you're running D&D and one of your players chose a dwarf, you might use their common enemy, kobolds, and their frequent ally, gnomes. The dwarves and kobolds could have a long histery of fighting for control over a certain mine; a conflict driven primarily by pride and old grudges as the mine's resources were exhausted long ago. Gnomes could be a prominent subculture within the dwarven community, used to give it a bit more color early on, and later provide a plot hook where racial tension between the two cultures is increasing due to an influx of gnomish refugees, leading the players to eventually discover what's causing the gnomes to flee their homeland and travel there themselves to deal with the problem.

Crab people

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>>49798653
I think we can come up with something a little better than Crab people

>>49793080
>big titty cow people

Sounds interesting. I think I need to see some reference pics anon

>>49797222
if you can't make a setting completely grounded in reality, without the slightest deviation, not even the date, then you've clearly failed as dm aswell.

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>>49797222
>it's this guy again

Please give us more delicious pasta, also tell us more about that book you're writing, we really care

>>49793080
Who are the allies and enemies of the races you already have established? You've got a couple starting points, so build around them.

The lizard people might be ancient foes of the grasshopper folk. Once they raided the small folk openly, until the grasshopper tribe banded together with the ant people and drove the lizards off.

Now the antfolk hold giant underground fortresses, grand bastions of civilization. But the grasshopper folk there are second class citizens at best and often are reduced to little more than slaves. Many of them escape into the wilds, only to come face to face with their ancient foe. But both of them struggle against the sheer military might the antfolk can now produce, so perhaps the time has come to set aside old rivalries and band together.

>>49798911

That Damn Crab People.

>>49798554
Pfft.

Everyone knows that dwarves and gnomes are the same species. It is only an ethnic distinction.

At this point either using dwarves orcs and elves or not using dwarves orcs and elves are both horribly cliche, so you're kind of fucked.

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You have a fuckton you could choose from.

Pathfinder alone has has a ton of races you can choose from to gain inspiration.
>humans and the myriad half breeds and such
tieflings (fiend blooded), aasimar ("angel" blooded), geniekin (Oread, Undine, Sylph, Ifrit, Suli), fetchlings, skinwalker (lycanthrope based people like tieflings), Half elf, Half orc, Dhampir, changeling (hag spawn), Gillmen (aquatic humans), Vishkanya (toxic humans), ganzi (mutated humans from close contact with things from beyond reality), Azlanti (atlanteans, have a bonus to every attribute)

animal people
ratfolk, catfolk, gnolls (spotted hyena), tengu (crow/raven), kobold (small dragony lizardy folk), grippli (jungle frogs), vanara (monkey), lizardfolk, nagaji (humanoid snakesque people), syrinx (owls), wyvaran (flying kobolds based on wyverns) and probably a few more i'm missing

Plant people
Ghoran (one of their racial traits is being delicious because they were originally bred as non sentient non humanoid crops by a wizard to survive in a blasted wasteland),

Constructs
Wyrwood (small wooden warforged), Androids (Crashed survivors of an alien ship), Shabti (egyptian living statues that served as the replacement for a nobles punishment in the afterlife and then escaped)

Aliens
Lashunta (mildly psychic, highly sexually dimorphic, antenna bearing rubber forehead aliens), Kasatha (four armed barsoomian esque desert people), astomoi (dark energy people without orifices), Triaxian (just look it up, they are weird), Reptoids (quite literally /x/ style conspiracy theory reptilians from another planet)

Fey
Gnome, Gathlain (Pixies with living wood wings), Elf, svirfneblin (evil gnomes)

The Weird and Hard to Classify
Samsaran (reincarnating people who might be angels), caligni (under dark dwelling humanoids who thrive in shadows), Dwarf, Duergar, Strix (Harpy like winged humanoids with jet black skin and eyes that dont move), Halfling.

>>49799267
Not really. You either use them because your setting has a use for the roles they provide, or you leave them out because it either doesn't need their roles or has something else to fill them.

Whichever way you go, the important thing is what their presence or absence brings to the setting. You should never make a decision on including/excluding something solely because it's cliche.

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>>49798911
>Implying they aren't the master race

>>49794026
Literally just intelligent polar bears with thumbs and yet they are an epic level fantasy race.

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>>49796190
>>49797215
Mah pigmented bretheren

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>>49792940
Take 6 random environments/biomes, 6 random families of organism, and 6 random philisophical principles, and mix them in a blender

For super high fantasy, include 6 random physical qualities and structures if you want your races to be less animal based.

Have fun

>>49800253
Every iteration of duck people I have ever seen in an RPG has been utterly awful. Everyone has looked like some form of Donald or Daffy Duck expy, ignoring any form of proper anatomy for a race of duck based bird people. Just like your picture.

>>49792940
look at other settings, take all the races you want, leave out the ones you dont want.
it tends to work unless you only pick specific ones.

If you have humans you dont even need another generic race.

Have something interresting, i tend to think that thri kreen always work well as an interresting race to thorw into the mix.
Evil non primitive lizard people work well, mindflayers are neat, why not some literal ayy lmaos when youre at it? Just steal dunmer, dunmer are cool and better than any other elves.

>>49793940
No.

>>49792940
Here, take my WIP for Lizardmen.

http://pastebin.com/1DWGUkPm

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>>49802193
>Swimmer Ssurans (sentence cuts off)
>they instead take that much poison damage instead
Other than that, nice resource. thanks, anon.

>>49793924
Lantern folk "eat" flammable matter. They prefer fancy oils and alcohols, but will also eat solid fuels like coal, charcoal, or even raw wood in a pinch.

Fire requires oxygen, so obviously lanternfolk require air just like humans.

Their bodies are mostly made up of soft metals like copper, tin, silver, and gold, which are further softened and animated through a combination of heat and magic. This makes their metal "skin" feel warm and soft to the touch. It also makes them vulnurable to all the same damage types as humans.

They produce a soft light, equal to a normal lantern. Traditional lanternfolk clothing is designed with holes to let light out. Wearing any kind of armor or non-lanternfolk clothing blocks most of the light, making it only illuminate a 5-foot radius (although the lanternfolk itself will still be visible in darkness from up to 50 feet away). A full-body cloth covering can be worn to completely block out all light, but this also slightly reduces the lanternfolk's perception.

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>>49802329
Hey man, WIP means WIP. Also, what the fuck am I supposed to do with a hybrid of gators, crocs, komodo dragons, and marine iguanas for the attitude of Swimmer Ssurans? I'm trying to give personality characteristics rather than cultural assumptions since I want those things to derive from where they live, not "Dwarves value hard work" or something like that which depends largely on where they grow up.